Image compression systems are becoming more and more useful in various applications. For example, video compression is often used to compress video information for storage on a digital versatile disc (DVD) or a hard disk drive (HDD). As another example, video compression is often used during real-time streaming of video information over a network or communication channel, such as the Internet, a digital subscriber line (DSL), a direct broadcast satellite (DBS) system, multimedia services over packet networks (MSPN), and cable television (CATV) networks. In addition, video compression is used in many other applications, such as computer games, video games, videoconferencing systems, videophones, interactive storage media (ISM), and remote video surveillance (RVS) systems.
Several video compression standards have been developed in the last two decades. One of the latest standards is the International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunications (ITU-T) H.264 standard. The H.264 standard is also known as Advanced Video Coding (AVC) or Moving Picture Experts Group 4 (MPEG-4) Part 10. The H.264 standard provides many benefits over previous standards, including improved rate distortion and lower bit rates. Among its features, the H.264 standard supports subpixel motion compensation.
Subpixel motion compensation is often computationally complex and computationally intensive. Because of this, the use of subpixel motion compensation, as part of the H.264 standard or other standard, often requires large amounts of processing time and resources. As a result, its use typically slows the performance of video compression and/or decompression systems.